District Court Judge Roger Vinson in Pensacola declined an emergency motion on Monday that would exempt Walton County beachfront property owners from an order closing all the county’s beaches.

In what is a most confusing statement, Vinson wrote, “Public beach on the Gulf of Mexico is not defined by legal ownership, but by what is the beach.” Even if a person has legal ownership of a private beach, Vinson sees it as public. So, private is private, except when it’s public!

The counsel for the beach owners, Kent Safriet, claimed owners were being “kicked off and threatened with arrest for being on their own beach.”